Geoheritage of Torres, Southern Brazil: Disseminating its geodiversity and promoting geotourism

Situated on the northern coast of the Rio Grande do Sul state, in the southern region of Brazil, the Torres municipality contains beautiful landscapes, with a variety of natural sights such as great dunes, lagoons, and its famous volcanic rock natural towers. The main geological processes that sculpted this region are associated with wind activity and the numerous rises and falls of the sea level that occurred between the Pleistocene to the present day. Torres is a highly popular tourist beach, and sees its population grow by nearly 500% during the summer months. Due to it being a tourism hotspot and its incredible geodiversity, Torres is one of the main areas of the “Caminhos dos Cânions do Sul” Geopark (CCSG), a 2,830 km² area that encompasses seven municipalities situated at the boundary of the Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina states. The geopark has three pillars, education, geoconservation, and tourism, and it aims to boost the economic, sociocultural, and environmental growth of the region in a sustainable manner. The geopark also seeks to help in the preservation of geological sites that most represent its regional diversity, such as the great Juro-Cretaceous volcano-sedimentary rock towers that give the city of Torres its name (which translates from the Portuguese to “Towers”). These structures, which can be seen throughout Torres’ coastline, are composed mostly of the basalts of the Serra Geral Group, which overlay the sandstones of the Botucatu paleodesert. In this municipality, the CCSG has, through lectures, itinerant exhibitions, training courses, and participation in cultural and scientific events, helped increase public consciousness regarding the importance of preserving and valorizing the area's geoheritage. In this work, we present a project developed through a partnership involving the Torres prefecture, the CCSG, and the GeoRoteiros group, which has as its objective the installation of information plaques about the geological evolution of the “Morros Testemunhos” and the state's Coastal Plain. We plan to install 10 plaques throughout the beach, each displaying didactic images and texts in an accessible language for the general public. The information available on these plaques will be summarized; in case the reader wishes to learn more, a QR Code will be available to take them to the websites of the organizing institutions, where they can not only read additional information, but also watch videos discussing the geosites of the geopark. This is a pilot project which will ascertain the viability of developing similar projects for the other municipalities that compose the CCSG.